Athenian horse archers?

[Mark G]

I've just noticed this in Thucydides

Thuc. 2.13.8

"Pericles also showed them that they had twelve hundred horse including mounted archers, with sixteen hundred archers unmounted, and three hundred galleys fit for service. "

Has anyone ever noticed this before?

I can't say I have every seen any hoplite army with native horse archers.  Scythians, sure, but not native.

[Imperial Dave]

Does he mean horse archers or just archers who happen to be mounted on horses?

[Duncan Head]

Athenian horse archers have been in army lists for decades. But your opposition between native and Scythian horse archers is probably mistaken; it's the existence of these Athenian horse archers that justifies the "Scythians" that we see in some tabletop Greek armies. Note that Thucydides doesn't say whether they are Greeks or barbarians.

The reason for depicting them as Scythians is probably (a) because we know of the Athenian "Scythian" slave archer-police, (b) because mounted archers in Scythian dress are shown in Athenian art, such as the famous "Miltiades kalos" plate. Of course, we don't really know whether these paintings show Scythians, or Athenians in fashionable Scythian riding-gear, nor whether any of them were actually intended to represent members of the Athenian hippotoxotai regiment.

Some of the Athenian horse-archers were certainly native Greeks, because we know of one Athenian citizen, Alkibiades the sone of the famous Alkibiades, who was brought to law because he served as a (paid) horse-archer, thus evading his obligation to serve as a hoplite. But the implication of the case is that it was unusual that the horse-archers were citizens. Spence thinks they were probably mercenaries.

[Mark G]

The context of the statement was a derailing of what Athens had to wage war.  So if they are Scythian police, they are permanent ones.

It does come over as native Athenian, though.  And I'm skeptical of the longevity of any Scythian slave given a horse and a bow, i cant see him staying for long if he wasn't paid well

[Duncan Head]

We know - it's in one of the links I gave - that the horse-archers were paid, hence Spence's suggestion that they were merecenaries. Scythians don't necessarily have to be slaves: some people seem to identify the slave-police with the wartime infantry archers, but I suspect that is completely wrong. If, as the Alkibiades case implies, rich Athenians didn't usually serve in the horse-archers - and poor Athenians didn't usually have an opportunity to learn to ride - it is hard to see how they could be citizens. The foot-archers, who occur in the same list in Thucydides, are in at least one place said to be Cretans. The horse-archers may have been quite a mixed bag of both Greek and barbarian foreigners with the occasional citizen maverick.

[Patrick Waterson]

One might expect the horse archers - assuming them to be at least predominantly Scythians - to be officered by Athenians.  Having glanced through the passage, there is nothing to suggest that the horse archers themselves would necessarily be Athenian, as Pericles lists 'hippeas ... diakosious kai khilious xun hippotoxotais' or 1,200 cavalry 'with' horse archers: xun, aka syn, can mean together with, besides, in company with, so maybe the horse archers were additional rather than inclusive.  That said, translators seem universally to interpret it as inclusive in this case.

On the subject of Athens' Scythian archers, this brief paper may be of some interest.

Those interested in how the Greek cavalryman mounted and rode might find this page handy.

[Mark G]

That makes more sense

[Duncan Head]

Incidentally this paper discusses the end of the Athenian horse-archers, as well as some other interesting stuff on later "light cavalry" corps that succeeded them.

[Mark G]

An interesting paper

[Patrick Waterson]

The material on Athenian prodromoi is useful, and intriguingly the thought is advanced that perhaps the designation means they were first into battle: indeed, when Xenophon refers to 'prodromoi' (Cavalry Commander I.25) he indicates they should be equipped as well, or as attractively, as possible, but when he refers to scouts (ibid.4.5) he uses 'proodous', not 'prodromoi', and describes what they do as 'proēgeisthai' (go first and lead the way, take the lead).

The assumption that prodromoi replaced hippotoxotai (horse archers) is speculative, but the absence of mention of horse archers along with prodromoi may support it.  The period in question seems to coincide with the rise of Macedon under Philip II, namely 359-350 BC, and one wonders if this is just coincidence.

Also interesting is Arrian's reference (IV.4.5) to Alexander committing four squadrons of sarissophoroi against the Scythians in his fight at the Jaxartes: we missed this when discussing sarissophoroi earlier.

prōton mian hipparkhian tōn xenōn kai tōn sarissophorōn ilas tessaras

(leading were a hipparchy of Greeks and four ilai of sarissophoroi)

This suggests that Macedonian prodromoi may have had a leading rather than a scouting role.  It is possible that Athenian prodromoi did the same.

[Mark G]

In addition to, i think.
They still seem to have performed light cav duties outside of a battle situation.
The separation of role between battle and non battle is quite normal

[Duncan Head]

It's a shame we don't know how many Athenian prodromoi there were (or were  meant to be, given that the ordinary Athenian cavalry were frequently not up to strength after the 5th century).

Somewhere I had got it into my head that they were fifty strong. At a guess, I'd taken Sekunda's suggestion that Dexileos was a prodromos, which Bugh doubts, and taken "one of the five" from his inscription to mean five per tribe, hence 50 total. But this looks unsupported, now, though not impossible. All we seem to know is that they were directly under the command of the hipparchs, so presumably their numbers can't have been huge.

[Jim Webster]

I was intrigued by the fact their wages were increased from 2 obols a day (the amount a citizen got as a juror), to 8 obols a day, when mercenary hoplites probably got 4 obols

Jim

[Duncan Head]

It looks as if the pay increase for the mounted archers is uncertain: this paper by Loomis suggests it was actually a pay cut, from two drachmas (12 obols) to 8. The only source is a fragment of a speech by Lysias, in a papyrus which is hard to read in places.

Eight obols (let alone 12) is indeed quite a high rate, but as Loomis points out, they were specialists with horses and composite bows to maintain. Interesting that he sees them as a high-status citizen force, rather than the lower-status mercenaries that other scholars suggest.

[Jim Webster]

Loomis makes sense.

But there was one bit that fascinated me. He quotes Xenophon, footnote 15 has the Greek, it's from  Mem. 3.3.1 (Sokrates to a young hipparch):

http://perseus.uchicago.edu/perseus-cgi/citequery3.pl?dbname=GreekFeb2011&query=Xen.%20Mem.%203.3.1&getid=1    translates it as


"Young man," he said, "can you tell us why you hankered after a cavalry command? I presume it was not to be first of the cavalry in the charge; for that privilege belongs to the mounted archers; at any rate they ride ahead of their commanders even."

I can see horse archers riding ahead of their commanders, their commanders supervising the maneuvering etc. But horse-archers being 'the first of the cavalry in the charge'

Unless the Greek actually says something different it looks as if our Athenian horse-archers were keen to get stuck in

Jim